371–380 of 919 posts
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This gets thrown out quite a bit but I don't really buy it. If it is not designed for alcohol, it probably isn't going to work. Alcohol has too many weird interactions with stuff like aluminum.
Which was why I didn't say "all" or anything like that. But basically a lot of engines from Ford and Volvo can run on ethanol. Any old iron block can if you replace pipes and hoses. And so on.
I just realized how much energy efficiency is being squeezed out of a Tesla. It's incredible. A normal diesel fueled sedan such as the Chevy Cruze diesel runs at about 31mpg, which is 13.2 km/l or 15.3 km/kg. Diesel has a mind-boggling 12700 Wh/kg energy density[1], which translates to an efficiency of ~827 Wh/km for the Chevy. By contrast, the Tesla Model S, has a ~540 kg battery[2]. At 272 Wh/kg (from the posted ar…
BMW claim that a diesel 3 series will get 61mpg. Volkswagen reckon a Golf 2.0 TDI will do 68mpg. Electric is still significantly better, but you didn't need pick a terrible diesel car as an example.
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Not that confusing, only the US measures fuel in gallons, isn't it? Everyone else just uses liters.
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There'll be plenty of diversity left, trust me.
"CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg which it says will go into mass production this year" This is a lot more credible than most of the battery stories, because CATL is already producing a ton of batteries, lending them some credibility. This is a little under 2x the density of current batteries.
This has a lot of potential coming from CATL. However, there is no mention of price. I'm betting this is going to be very expensive.
Why does 500wh/kg make electric aircraft possible? 6x less than kerosene. Is that the break even on cost if you can source very cheap electricity? Seems like it would still annihilate the payload/range.
[1] https://www.alexander-schleicher.de/en/flugzeuge/as-34-me/
[2] https://www.lange-aviation.com/antares-serie/antares-21e/
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The big reason for this is thermodynamics. A conventional internal combustion engine car has to convert chemical energy to kinetic energy - the absolute best theoretical efficiency of this might be 70%, but in practice it's more like 30%. Electric cars have to pay the same thermodynamic penalty, but they pay it at the power station (In practice, thanks to renewables, not all the electricity used to charge a car will…
It is a sign of the success of the oil industry that this analysis always takes the cost of electricity generation back to the source, but assumes that fuel stations pump from a perfect source of naturally refined/distilled hydrocarbons. It is surprisingly difficult to get numbers on how much oil is used to extract, refine and transport oil. The best I found was this: https://www.speakev.com/threads/energy-required-t…
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Which was why I didn't say "all" or anything like that. But basically a lot of engines from Ford and Volvo can run on ethanol. Any old iron block can if you replace pipes and hoses. And so on.
Sure, if you rebuild an engine to run on ethanol it'll run on ethanol.
I just realized how much energy efficiency is being squeezed out of a Tesla. It's incredible. A normal diesel fueled sedan such as the Chevy Cruze diesel runs at about 31mpg, which is 13.2 km/l or 15.3 km/kg. Diesel has a mind-boggling 12700 Wh/kg energy density[1], which translates to an efficiency of ~827 Wh/km for the Chevy. By contrast, the Tesla Model S, has a ~540 kg battery[2]. At 272 Wh/kg (from the posted ar…
BMW claim that a diesel 3 series will get 61mpg. Volkswagen reckon a Golf 2.0 TDI will do 68mpg. Electric is still significantly better, but you didn't need pick a terrible diesel car as an example.
My diesel 3 series (2.9 litre, late 90s design) would get 8.83 L/100 km (32 mpg UK, 26 mpg US) driving round town, stopping at traffic lights and averaging Engine technology will presumably have moved on in the past 25 years, and efficiency will have improved, but you'll still get crappy fuel economy for stopping and starting all the time.
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Hybrids that emit carbon will still have a huge effect on global warming, simply because there are so many cars. There isn't a huge amount of headroom for efficiency increases, so you're only going to get anywhere near "net zero" by charging from a renewable grid nearly all the time.
According to this chart, road transport sector is responsible for 11.9 % of greenhouse emissions wordlwide.^1 Could you please expand upon how you define the huge effect it will have on global warming? Don't you think it's better to focus on other parts of that pie, where it's easier to implement widespread savings and change? ^1: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector